The Market for Short SFF: Could The Academic Model Work?

There has been a lot written recently about the market for short fiction in SFF, as well as literary short fiction generally. A few weeks back, in response to The Offing introducing submission fees for authors, I wrote a post speculating as to whether the academic journal model with significant submission fees could work for literary or genre magazines. More recently, after a post by the editor of Clarkesworld, there has been a lot of speculation about the future of short SFF.  You can read my recap here (which contains links to the originals):

1. The Market for SFF Short Fiction
2. The Market for Short SFF (Continued)

In this post, I want to update my earlier speculations about the academic publishing model in light of what I have learned over the past few days.

To set the stage, note that there are very few SFF magazines that I would describe as self supporting in the sense that they can raise regular revenues sufficient to cover all of their costs including paying authors professional rates, editorial staff a reasonable wage, as well as covering the costs of illustrators and all other costs including overhead.

Of those that are not self supporting, the balance of the funds seems to come from one of three sources:

1. Sugar parents. A parent company that runs the magazine at a loss.
2. Staff. Editorial staff who volunteer their time and/or work at a below market wage.
3. Authors. The magazine pays nothing or below pro rate for stories that it publishes.

The discussion over the past few days suggests to me that there is no shortage of fans who will donate their time to run a magazine, nor of authors willing to publish their work for little or no money. As long as this is true there is nothing to fear as far as the future of short SFF. However, as long as this is the case we should probably expect to see a continual churning of publishers in which new magazines enter the market and fold after a few years without ever graduating to self supporting status.

I think the short fiction market would be better off (authors, fans and readers all) if it were possible to create alternative publishing models that paid pro rates to authors, a reasonable wage to editorial staff, and delivered a good quality product to readers. Could the academic publishing model work as an alternative?

What do I mean by the academic publishing model? They key feature of the academic publishing model is that the product delivered by the journal is not just a collection of published papers; the product is also a mentoring and development service for young academics through the provision of good referee reports by established members of the profession. In return, it charges significant submission fees to authors.

It is important to stress that this is not a variant of the author-supported model listed above. Rather, the key idea behind the academic publishing model is that the customers of the journal would now be both readers---who get stories to read---and authors---who get significant and detailed feedback on their writing from experts in the field. That is, the approach bundles a loss making magazine together with a writing feedback/writer development product that makes a profit in the hope that the bundle breaks even as a whole. In this sense it is closer to the sugar-parent model in which the magazine is a loss leader for the profit making writing feedback business.

Could it work for SFF? In my earlier post I threw out some numbers which, in light of the recent discussion, now seem too optimistic. Before revising them a little, let me stress that the academic model relies on getting three "prices" correct. That is:

1. Being able to pay expert "referees"---in this case established writers---enough to make providing significant feedback attractive to them as an income stream;
2. Bring able to charge authors a low enough submission fee to attract submissions in the first place; and
3. Charging a high enough subscription fee or attracting enough patrons to defray whatever costs are not covered by the margin between the submission fee and the compensation to the referee.

With that as a prelude, what would it take to make this kind of a magazine self supporting? I take it as a given that the magazine would make a loss its first few years. These losses would need to be covered by a wealthy benefactor or by crowd funding. Supposing that can be done, what would it take for this magazine to cover costs once it was established?

Let us suppose that the magazine aims to publish (eventually, if not initially) 500,000 words of fiction per year.  Suppose it aims to pay pro rates. SFWA pro rates are currently six cents per word meaning $30,000 in author compensation. If SFWA rates go up, this amount obviously increases. Last time I worked on the assumption that rates rose to 10 cents per word meaning $50,000 of author compensation.

Some of this might be covered by patrons, subscriptions and donations.  How much? Last time I assumed 5,000 subscriptions paying $1 per month (net of any costs) for $60,000 per year. I now believe that this was hopelessly unrealistic. Although Clarkesworld claims 35 thousand readers, they have only 3,000 subscribers after being in operation 9 years. Strange Horizons is looking for $18,000 in crowd funding this year and I am not entirely sure how much of their costs that is covering.

It seems possible (although not certain) that between subscriptions (maybe 1,000 brave souls paying $12 per year), donations, patrons, and advertising, that it might be possible to raise $20,000 in revenue per year. Depending on what pro rates turn out to be, this means we need to raise an additional $10,000 to $30,000 just to cover author compensation, without factoring in other costs like artwork, overhead and editorial compensation. The latter would be considerably less under the academic model given that the editor is mostly a part-time managerial position (a managerial editor) with content editing outsourced to the referees, but it would still be significant.

As an academic, I can typically work out whether an academic paper (much longer than a genre short story, often filled with math and tables) is publishable, and then write up a detailed report on the paper, in about three hours. I know some of my colleagues who are faster, although I imagine their reports are less thorough. Suppose this can be done in two hours for a typical (shorter) SFF piece. How much would established authors require to participate?

Obviously, very famous authors would require far more than could be charged. But if reports on author incomes are accurate, then it is conceivable that there exists a decent set of midlist authors who would work for $30 per hour (last time, I worked with $40 per hour, but we need to reduce it to make ends meet now). This requires a $60 submission fee to pay for itself. But we'd need to charge a markup on this in order to cover the costs of paying authors, the managing editor, artists and other overhead.

Suppose we charge $100 per submission making for a $40 markup (less on average if the submission fee was reduced for people from middle and low income countries, or if subscribers get a submission fee discount, and taking into account the fact that accepted works would have the submission fee refunded). How many submissions would we receive?  Last time I postulated 400 per year. With an average $30 markup, this generates only $12,000; enough to cover author costs if pro rates stay the same, but not enough to cover much of the other costs, or cover an increase in pro rates.

Could we increase the markup by charging $120 submission fee? Could we get more than 400 submissions? Previously, I had thought that this might be possible given that the market for writing workshops seems to be healthy. But the discussion of recent days makes me think that might be quite difficult, especially if increasing numbers of authors think they do not need editorial feedback and are happy to publish online immediately after finishing a draft.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, we could get 500 submissions charging a $120 fee generating a markup of $50 on average after discounts etc. That $25,000 could conceivably cover costs for an online only journal given current levels of pro rates. If pro rates went up significantly, the additional revenue would need to be raised through further increases in that markup, or subscriptions or some other source.

To know whether this would work or not, the questions we need answers to are:

1. Would any established authors work as 'referees' for $30 per hour? With an editorial board of 25 established writers, 20 reviews per year would generate $1,200 in extra income for about one weeks work spread throughout the year. Is that attractive enough?
2. Would any authors be prepared to pay $120 in return for prompt detailed feedback on the work and a chance of publication?

What do people think?